The biggest threat to our planet...

A bottle of wine, a laptop and a million thoughts that have accumulated over the past… year and a half since my last blog entry, has this so called “adult life” become my worst nightmare and consumed my life? The answer is obvious, but luckily (and unluckily) this Lung Mei “episode” (so I hope to be) has really put me back into perspective.

The gathering last Sunday at the Hong Kong government headquarters was beyond “blog-worthy”. Of course, being a “lazy” citizen myself, this was the first time I used my free time to go stand up for something that I believe. At first, I dreaded going…mostly because of a number of different obligations in my life, but my motivation to go (aside from protecting the environment) was the urge to feel united with the crowd of people next to me (a feeling I used to get at the few music festivals I’ve been to ;) although the feeling of “unity” wasn’t as powerful as those from other events, I was really amazed by how great everything was (organization, environment, participation…). I think people that have lived here all their lives don’t realize how great this city is. The simple fact that 3,000 people were able to gather in one place to voice their opinion (which goes against that of the government’s) without being stopped by police is unheard of in a lot of countries in the world. Aside from this, the place that we gathered at was beautiful…looking at Victoria harbor, blue skies, big opened area with trees…if I was anything close to being a good writer I would give a much more vivid picture than this.

I want to thank all those that contributed to the even that day and although all of us are a bit angry at our dear government officials for the bad decision that they have made/are making, we should also be glad that we are all given the opportunity to voice ourselves in a safe and pleasant environment.

Deep down inside I believe that the director of EPD (Environmental Protection Agency) and the marine specialists at AFCD (Agriculture, fisheries and conservation department) know that constructing a bathing beach at Lung Mei is a bad idea…maybe they are just afraid to speak up because their high-salary jobs would be on the line…? I don’t know…what I do know is that this event has clearly identified the problems with the current environmental protection system. Each government department and involved parties rely too much on each other and/or blame each other. If all these different sections and components exist for the sole purpose of environmental protection and supposedly everyone’s goals is to protect the environment, then how did we end up here today? Aside from green NGOs, have we all doomed the natural environmental by pursuing a career in this field? Why are we so afraid to speak up? Environmental protection is simple….simply just let things be, and that was what we were asking for in the first place. The root of the evil is that we all want to appear to be a certain way, we want to “seem” like we are doing everything we can to protect the seahorse, the starfish, and natural landscape but when it comes down to it, we are all hoping for someone else to do it for us. “The biggest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it” – Rob Swan.